Cisco Network Consulting Firm

Cisco is a long-time front-runner in delivering state-of-the-art firewalls for the broadest possible variety of environments. Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls represent an advanced cybersecurity solution that combines dedicated hardware, cloud-based services, and machine learning to block, identify, and respond to threats without manual intervention. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE-certified firewall consultants can assist you to plan and execute an efficient migration to Firepower firewalls from Cisco's legacy ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX appliances and show you how to enhance Firepower firewalls with Cisco's subscription-based security services to create and centrally manage IT environments that span local offices, data centers, and cloud resources. Progent can also assist you to maintain and troubleshoot older-generation Cisco firewalls. Progent's certified network security consultants can help you with policy creation based on industry best practices so you can build a consistent security posture across all your networked endpoints at any location.

Cisco's Firepower NGFW Firewall Appliances
Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) deliver a major performance boost compared to Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X firewalls and offer unified management and automation of modern security features like application visibility and control, next-generation intrusion protection (NGIPS) with intelligent prioritization of risks, advanced malware protection, DDoS mitigation, and sandboxing. For more information about Cisco's Firepower family of Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), refer to Cisco Firepower firewalls consulting expertise.

Cisco's ASA 5500-X and Legacy Firewalls
Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX 500 firewalls provide integrated firewall, IPsec VPN, and intrusion prevention system services in compact single-box packages, delivering a wide range of features to match the security requirements of organizations from small businesses to enterprises and Internet service providers. Cisco's ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500 Series, and PIX firewalls allow IT security teams to defend their network edge and offer secure offsite and mobile connectivity while utilizing advanced administration mechanisms based on Cisco's world-class firewall technology.

Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX firewall appliances have reached end-of-life but remain widely deployed in small and mid-size businesses and in a few enterprise networks. Cisco's ASA 5500-X Series Next-Generation Firewalls deliver substantially more value and have superseded Cisco's ASA 5500 and PIX 500 lines of firewalls for new installations. Still, Cisco's legacy firewall appliances, if properly managed, can offer a high level of security by providing multiple services including stateful firewall, VPN tunneling, and IPS.

Since Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire, the whole family of Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls can be provisioned to support Firepower Services, based on Sourcefire's Snort technology, which is the market's most deployed network intrusion protection system (IPS). Firepower services provide enhanced capabilities including advanced malware protection (AMP), URL filtering, real-time threat analytics, and automation.

Progent's Cisco CCIE-premier network consultants can assist you to support and troubleshoot legacy ASA 5500 Series and PIX firewall appliances and can also assist you to plan and carry out a smooth upgrade to Cisco's ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent can also assist you to design, configure, tune, manage and debug new firewall ecosystems built on Cisco's current ASA 5500-X firewalls with Firepower Services. Progent's firewall consultants can also assist you to upgrade from your Cisco ASA 5500-X Series deployment to Cisco's latest Firepower Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs).

Cisco's ASA 5500-X Firewall Product Family
Cisco's extensive line of ASA 5500-X security appliances includes an improved replacement for each rack-mountable model in the older ASA 5500 series of firewalls. Each ASA 5500-X model is suited for the identical market as the corresponding earlier models, which gives most ample room for selecting a solution that aligns with their security requirements and IT budgets. All ASA 5500-X firewalls are based on Cisco's tested stateful-inspection firewall technology and all include purpose-built 64-bit hardware with multicore processors and support Cisco's powerful security services. All models in Cisco's ASA 5500-X family provide consistent security across any combination of physical, virtual, and cloud deployments.

For more information about Cisco's ASA 5500-X firewalls, Cisco Firepower services, and Progent's consulting for Cisco ASA firewalls, go to Cisco Firepower integration and debugging consulting

Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X Security Appliances
Cisco ASA 5500-X security appliances work with software or hardware modules that enable Firepower Services, which provide layered defense against sophisticated attacks. Cisco's Firepower Services are powered by technology acquired by Cisco from Sourcefire. Major capabilities of Firepower Services for ASA 5500-X security appliances include:

• Layered defense against both familiar and new threats
• Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) that uses big data techniques to discover and mitigate intrusions
• A Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) that provides contextual analysis that looks at clients, network infrastructure, apps, and content to detect threats that use simultaneous approaches
• Fine-grained Application Visibility and Control (AVC that is aware of thousands of applications and can automatically launch standard and customized IPS policies based on the degree of risk

Smaller implementations of ASA 5500-X firewalls can be effectively managed using Cisco's on-box Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) Adaptive Security Device Manager, a web utility provided with all ASA 5500-X models. ASDM includes an easy-to-use web dashboard for configuring, managing, and debugging ASA 5500-X appliances and modules.

For more complex deployments, ASA 5500-X appliances with Firepower can be administered using Cisco's Firepower Management Center, implemented as one or more physical or virtual appliances. Firepower Management Center provides centralized firewall management, Application Visibility and Control (AVC, enhanced IPS, URL filtering, and Advanced Malware Protection (AMP). Because of frequent rebranding after Cisco's purchase of Sourcefire Defense Center, Firepower Management Center has been offered under several names that include Cisco Defense Center, FireSIGHT Defense Center, and Cisco Firesight Management Center.

Cisco's Firepower Management Center provides capabilities unavailable with Cisco's on-device Adaptive Security Device Manager tool. Extra features include expanded context awareness, Cisco's Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) with mitigation for client devices, a dashboard that provides real-time network infrastructure visualization, automated policy optimization driven by risk evaluation of attacks, comprehensive IPS, custom application discovery for Application Visibility and Control, customized health notifications, enhanced reporting options, and APIs for host input and databases. Hardware-dependent capabilities like clustering, stacking, switching, routing, VPN, and NAT must be managed via Cisco's ASA 5500-X on-box ASDM or the ASA 5500-X CLI.

Cisco ASA 5500 Adaptive Security Appliances
Cisco ASA 5500 Series Firewalls build on technology behind the PIX 500 family Security Appliance, the IPS 4200 Series Intrusion Prevention System, and Cisco's VPN 3000 Series concentrator. These solutions enable the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) 5500 Series Firewall product line to offer a firewall that defends against the widest variety of attacks. Cisco ASA 5500 Series Firewalls provide application security, local containment, and clean Virtual Private Network connectivity throughout the entire product portfolio. This broad scope of protection enables defense of any network segment, which includes the most typical attack vectors such as remote sites, LAN-attached inside users, and remote connected VPNs.

Cisco ASA 5500 Series firewalls deliver robust application protection via intelligent, application-aware inspection engines that analyze network flows at Layers 4-7. This results in a more secure environment covering Web, voice, and 3G-mobile wireless services. To defend networks against application-layer assaults and to offer stronger control over the applications and protocols utilized in their networks, these inspection engines incorporate extensive application and protocol knowledge and employ protection enforcement technologies that include anomaly detection and state monitoring. Also included are assault sensing and mitigation techniques including application/protocol command filters and URL deobfuscation. Cisco ASA 5500 Series firewall inspection engines also deliver management of IM and peer-to-peer file sharing, enabling businesses to enforce usage policies and recover network bandwidth for important business processes.

For more information about Progent's support services for ASA 5500 security appliances, visit Cisco ASA 5500 series firewalls integration and troubleshooting services.

PIX Firewall Appliances
Built upon a tested, specialized operating system that delivers rich security features, PIX security appliances offer excellent protection and have earned Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4 status and ICSA Labs Firewall and IP Security certification. PIX security appliances offer security for a broad array of Voice over IP and additional mixed-media standards such as H.323 v. 4, SIP, SCCP, RTSP, and MGCP, enabling organizations to protect deployments of a wide range of current and next-generation IP voice and multimedia applications.

Administrators can furthermore remotely configure, track, and analyze PIX firewall appliances via a command-line interface. Secure command-line interface communication is available using a number of methods such as Secure Shell Protocol, Telnet through IP Security (IPsec), and out-of-band through a console port. PIX firewall appliances also have robust auto-update features, a collection of revolutionary protected remote-administration options that make sure that firewall settings and software images are kept up to date.

For more information about Progent's consulting services for PIX 500 firewalls, go to PIX firewalls integration and debugging services.

Progent's Migration Support Services for Cisco Firewalls
Because Cisco has ceased offering the PIX 500 and ASA 5500 families of firewalls, many companies are concerned about relying on a key security component that might stop being supported. Cisco ASA 5500-X and Firepower NGFW Series security appliances have the benefit of being new products and also offer several technical and financial advantages in comparison to PIX devices. These advantages include significantly better performance, optional SSL VPN support, and an expandable architecture that protects your investment by allowing you to self-install new security services whenever you need them. Progent's Cisco network engineers can assist you to assess the business case for migrating from PIX or Cisco ASA 5500 firewalls, create a migration plan that permits a quick and non-disruptive upgrade, assist your IT staff to install new ASA 5500-x or Firepower Series appliances, and provide remote training, consulting, and troubleshooting services.

Additional Ways Progent Can Help Your Business with Cisco ASA and PIX Firewalls
Cisco's Firepower Series, ASA Series, and PIX family firewalls provide an array of setup, tracking, and analysis features which give you the flexibility to deploy these firewalls to match your business needs. Progent's CCIE certified network experts can show you how to build a cost-effective network infrastructure that incorporates Cisco firewall technology and that offers advanced security, fault tolerance, performance, and manageability. Progent's CISA and CISSP-ISSP-premier IS security engineers can help your business to develop a security strategy appropriate for your business and can set up your PIX or ASA firewall to support your security strategy. Progent's risk assessment professionals can evaluate the strength of your current firewall deployment and audit the overall security of your whole IS environment. Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) can deliver urgent remote technical support for Cisco products and can give you quick access to a Cisco expert.

For additional information concerning Progent's professional support for Cisco technology, choose a subject:

• Overview of Progent's Cisco Network Support
• Fast and Affordable Online Help from a CCIE Network Engineer
• Cisco Routers Consulting Support
• Cisco Wireless Deployment Support
• Aironet Wireless Access Points Consulting Help
• Cisco Small Business WiFi Access Points Engineering Services
• Cisco Catalyst Wi-Fi 6/6E Wireless APs Planning, Configuration and Troubleshooting Consulting
• Cisco Wireless Controllers Support Services
• Meraki Wireless APs Design Support
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM) and CallManager Configuration and Troubleshooting
• Cisco VoIP Phones and IP Video Desktop Phones Consulting Services and Cisco Wireless VoIP Phone Configuration
• Cisco Jabber Integration Services
• Catalyst Switches Deployment Services
• Cisco VPN Integration Help
• SIP and CUBE Infrastructure Solutions: SIP Trunking and Cisco CUBE Integration Consulting
• Cisco Duo MFA Two-factor Authentication (2FA) Services for Telecommuters
• Design Solutions for Cisco-based Data Centers
• Infrastructure Design Expertise for Service Providers
• Centralized Cloud-based and Hybrid Network Management Technologies for Cisco-based Environments

Integration of Cisco and Third-party Firewall Technology
Progent offers expertise in firewall and VPN products from all major vendors and can help you integrate Cisco technology with additional security solutions to help you build a cost-effective network infrastructure that provides a level of security and flexibility appropriate for your business. Third-party firewall and VPN support services available from Progent include:

• Palo Alto Networks PA-Series Firewalls Consulting
• Check Point Software Consulting
• Barracuda CloudGen Firewall Consulting
• Watchguard Consulting
• Juniper Networks NetScreen and SSG Firewall Consulting
• SonicWall Consulting
• Fortinet FortiGate Firewall Consulting
• Symantec Raptor Consulting

In order to get in touch with Progent about professional assistance for Cisco technology, call 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.